Let’s Not Go to the Movies

This Saturday, as most of Hollywood is primping itself for the Oscars, a few unlucky contenders will be vying for the dubious honor of the Razzie, the annual award doled out for cinema’s least distinguished accomplishments. Despite the inherent embarrassment that comes with winning a Razzie, the strange thing about “bad” movies is that somewhere along the line, being bad became something that was, well, O.K.

As all annualism authors must do, Adams set up some basic ground rules that would dictate the next year of his life. He’d aim for at least a movie a day, and only films that had some kind of commercial theatrical release in the English-speaking world would qualify, thus ruling out a vast swath of bad Bollywood epics, made-for-TV movies, and amateur Sundance aspirants. Adams devises a hundred-point system to evaluate all the important criteria: dialogue, directing, writing, music. The guidelines are necessary, but they also highlight how arbitrary his task really is: why shouldn’t bad foreign movies be included? His ultimate goal isn’t just to find the worst movie ever, but to make a distinction between “what’s so-bad-it’s-good, what’s so-very-bad-it’s-bad, and, ultimately, what’s so very-very-bad-it’s the worst.” (And yes, he’s read lots of Pauline Kael).

With the rules established, Adams’s next step is to build a list of must-see bad movies. He begins with the IMBD Bottom 100, and expands it to include titles from other bad movie subgenres. There are the notorious flops (“Gigli,” “Ishtar”). There are stars whose résumés are besmirched with stinkers, some obvious (Madonna, John Travolta), some less so (Warren Beatty). There are terrible movies from acclaimed filmmakers (“1941,” “Howard the Duck”) And of course, there are the sequels. (“Speed 2,” “Return to the Blue Lagoon”). Adams has a knack for pinpointing bad-movie tropes, like the demonic child or the gun-toting heroine, and a boundless appetite for cinematic ephemera, like the fact that the renowned Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski shot the infamous Vanilla Ice star vehicle, “Cool as Ice.”

But there’s a grievous oversight: where are all the bad chick flicks? The dozens of tepid romantic comedies starring Kate Hudson, Ashley Judd, Matthew McConaughey? The shelves-full of would-be tearjerkers produced in the wake of “Terms of Endearment”? Adams doesn’t even scrape the surface when it comes to the massive amount of mediocre-to-awful films made for, about, and by women over the years. This Sunday, if there’s any justice in the world, Kathryn Bigelow will beat her ex-husband and become the first woman to ever win the Oscar for best director. Here’s hoping that someday soon, a woman will be considered for the honor of worst director, too.

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